Tuesday, January 13, 2009

Spiced Winter Ale has been bottled

On Saturday, I finally got around to bottling the Spiced Winter Ale. It still tastes a little over spiced. Hopefully this will mellow out in time.

I did something a little different this time, as far as carbonation is concerned. I used Munton's Carbonation Tabs, instead of a priming sugar solution. According to the packaging, you use 3 tablets for lower carbonation, 4 tablets for normal carbonation, and 5 tablets for higher carbonation. For this Spiced Winter Ale, I used 4 tablets per bottle. After thinking about it, after the fact, I should have experimented with the tablets. I should have used three, four, and five tablets in specific six packs, to see how different each would have been. Since I still have a couple of packets of tablets left, I may try this on my next bottling adventure later this month with my Schwarzbier.

In the end, I got exactly two cases of the Spiced Winter Ale. I bottled a total of 50 beers, but two bottles broke off at the neck when capping them. It's not surprising, as a lot of my bottles have been used over and over and over again. There's bound to be some wear and tear on them.

I'll give them a couple of weeks before trying the first bottle. I'm sure they won't be as mellow by then, but I'd still like to see what it tastes like carbonated and cold.

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